Life Support and Crew Transfer -
Review

Group 5 had conducted a series of
environmental control tests since the Mid-Term Review to determine
the flight readiness of the Apollo docking module and Soyuz. Equally
significant was the work done since October 1973 to ensure the
non-flammability of American and Soviet equipment that was to be
transferred from one spacecraft to another. This topic had not been
addressed in any detail until the Mid-Term Review. Since the Soviets
used an 80 percent nitrogen 20 percent oxygen atmosphere, spacecraft
flammability was not as severe a worry as it was for the Americans in
their nearly pure oxygen atmosphere spacecraft. Walt Guy, in looking
back on this topic, commented:

We had seen movies in which they
wore what appeared to be woollen clothes and fur hats, so we didn't
feel that they had addressed the question of flammability. At one
point, we considered putting all transferred equipment - such as
space suits - into our fire proof bags. After EVA went away, our
concern became one of not introducing materials into each other's
spacecraft that could cause a fire. Our safety people were still
concerned that their spacecraft might be on the lucky side instead of
the safe side. Obviously, we flew a lot of missions before our Apollo
disaster, which proved that we were more lucky that safe. There was a
lot of concern about the basic design of the Soyuz from a safety
point of view. Lunney got the Soviets to agree to
[300] a certification document for the non-flammability of
each piece of transferred equipment. When we eliminated the EVA and
reduced much of the equipment to be transferred, the list became much
shorter; we were able to consolidate all those documents into a
single document.27

After considerable discussion, the Soviets
agreed to use the American flammability test procedures to determine
the safety of their equipment. One key point dealt with the
cosmonauts' flight suits. Since the Americans could not let the
Soviet crew enter Apollo wearing wool or cotton clothing, they
volunteered to give the Soviets enough material to manufacture new
suits. But Lavrov declined the offer, saying that the Soviets
intended to develop a flameproof material of their own. After several
experiments, Lavrov's team produced a cloth that Walt Guy noted was
superior in its self-extinguishing characteristics to the material
used by the Apollo crew. In a pure oxygen environment, the Soviet
cloth, called Lola, would self-extinguish, whereas the American
material tended to burn very slowly. During the development of their
fabric, the Soviets had brought successive samples of the material to
the U.S. for the Johnson Space Center (JSC) specialists to test.
Lavrov was proud of the work that his Group 5 people had done, and he
had used the samples to demonstrate their progress to Guy and his
colleagues.

Once they got involved in the fire safety
topic, the Soviets subjected nearly all the items they planned to
transfer to rigorous testing. On the American side, the NASA team
used four methods to determine the flame-proof nature of their
materials. In addition to testing, they used analysis, similarity,
and waiver. Seventeen items of American equipment to be transferred
to Soyuz were certified by analysis to be safe by virtue of the
materials from which they had been fabricated, for example,
sunglasses, wrist watches, writing instruments, sliderules, and the
like. Six other pieces of equipment, such as speaker boxes, had been
approved for flight by determining that they were similar to hardware
previously tested and found safe. Only four articles were certified
using waivers. Walt Guy could tell the FRR Board that Working Group 5
had no open items. All equipment to be transferred had been cleared
for fire safety.28

Summarizing the Working Group reports, the
Technical Directors indicated that all project milestones had been
completed as scheduled. The two teams had finished their detailed
review of joint flight safety issues and had prepared safety
assessment reports to clarify the safety of selected design areas.
Lunney and Bushuyev listed areas in which work remained to be
completed:

JUNE MCC [Mission Control Center]
SIMULATION

FINAL UPDATE OF ON-BOARD DOCUMENTS

[301] PREPARATION FOR
JOINT SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS

ANALYSIS OF FAILURE OF SENSOR INDICATING UV
[ultraviolet] RETROREFLECTOR OPEN

George Low recorded in his notes on the FRR
that "there were no serious open issues, and it was quite clear that
this review was considered to be a formality by the . . . Soviet
side."30 R. H. Dietz noted that during the morning session of
the FRR Low was the only person to extensively question the Directors
and chairmen. Since the Deputy Administrator himself remarked about
this after the lunch break, Petrov asked a few questions and
Kotelnikov asked one when the meeting resumed. Low speculated that
prior to the FRR the Soviets had satisfied themselves internally as
to the readiness of the two sides for the mission. For his own part,
Low felt that all his questions had been "well answered by the
working group co-chairmen from both sides." Still, he was a little
uneasy about the possibility of clear cut decisionmaking in the event
of an emergency. In his trip report, he noted:

My remaining concern after this
FRR has to do with command and authority of command, particularly in
contingency situations. At no time is there a single commander in
space nor is there a single flight director on the ground who is in
charge. The project had tried to accommodate this situation by trying
to anticipate all possible contingencies. I asked what would happen
in the event of an unanticipated contingency or in case there is a
difference in interpretation of whether or not a contingency exists.
Although these questions were answered rather forcefully, I am still
not convinced that this is not a potential problem
area.31

At the end of the review, Low and Kotelnikov
signed a protocol indicating that "the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project is
proceeding in accordance with the agreed schedule and ready to
proceed toward the launching, planned for July 15,
1975."32

32. "Summary of the
Joint Review of the Flight Readiness of the Apollo-Soyuz Project," 22
May 1975; "Space Officials Give Approval to Link-up of Apollo and
Soyuz," New York Times, 23 May 1975; "All Systems Go," Washington Post, 23 May
1975; and "Apollo-Soyuz Flight is Okayed," Baltimore Sun, 23 May
1975.